what is interesting to me (as a geographical literalist who only wants to interpret musical production around the framework of climate zone) is how swedes and brits and dudes from the bay area, none of whom have proper beaches, are cranking out the best 'balearica' around. but i guess the answer to that is sort of apparent--if balearica requires a certain placelessness (and i think thats true in particular of the 'nu'-balearica of the last 3-4 years) it is probably advantageous to have no beach-y tropical art forms around that will influence and make specific your far more 'general' Beach music.
i am not sure that i believe any of what i am saying about why artists from some places are making certain specific types of music but i enjoy doing it as a thought experiment, and i have to say that it seems particularly 'right' to do so when talking about so much of this--its weirdly difficult to have a conversation about studio, say, without talking about how theyre from sweden
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:13 (fifteen years ago) link
good beach music from germany too
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Boney_M._-_Oceans_Of_Fantasy_%281979%29.jpg
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:18 (fifteen years ago) link
I think that for me this music is almost purely escapism, I've only been to LA a couple of times and they were two very short visits.
As someone who lives a fantasy life through music the reverse slumming of listening to music that was explicitly upper class can be sort of freeing.
That and I live in the center of the North America and coastal beaches are in short supply here.
Its interesting that you choose the Band as an example of specifically regional music Tim, seeing as they were a Canadian band making music heavily indebted to a rural and mostly Southern experience. The Dead were similarly very far away from the Ozarks from which they derived so much of their sound. But yes, Fleetwood Mac took that a step farther (UK band making music that was sort of a cosmopolitan synthesis of blues and country and arguably some soul). Almost all of these Californian bands who went so stylishly rural in the 70s had very little to do with the experiences made reference to in their music. Except for some very specific cases like Gene Clark or Gram Parsons.
I feel that the yacht sound was more honest, it at least sounded like California, like privilege and wealth.
― Siah Alan, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:24 (fifteen years ago) link
i was actually going to mention this! cause the thing about "cosmic american music" or "americana" is that at the level of "AMERICA" is way totally rootless/placeless--i mean thats why its called "americana" instead of "country western" or "appalachian" or wvr! except that--tim is from stupid australia, so at a global level "americana" is pretty specific and geographically limited.
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:28 (fifteen years ago) link
ha you know what fits into this thread? brightblack morning light.
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:32 (fifteen years ago) link
hippie-ass-rootless-american-beardo-codeine-funk
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:34 (fifteen years ago) link
they are from the south! though they do live in the desert now. and are happy to be rooted there.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:38 (fifteen years ago) link
i do like the idea that they made their new album using only solar power. they are funny hippies.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:39 (fifteen years ago) link
in that arthur interview i just read, brightblack dude goes on about how he doesn't like people using phony southern accents when they sing.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:41 (fifteen years ago) link
i know! they're from rural louisiana (or at least the dude is) and then they started making music smokin a ton of weed in huntingdon county and then moved down to the desert! rootless!
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:45 (fifteen years ago) link
haha the dude has a major LA accent
uh LA there means louisiana
Brightblack's first album really made me wonder why no one picked it up and remixed it.
Maybe its just too stoned and too slow, but I was listening to a lot of dubstep and disco when it came out so it made sense to me.
― Siah Alan, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 01:52 (fifteen years ago) link
is it sort of hard for anyone else to link balearic and beardo so easily? kind of like sonny crockett hanging out with chong or something?
― winston, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 04:02 (fifteen years ago) link
i guess i'm still thinking of beardo as that harvey "mad dog chronicles" and led zepellin but that thread is kind of all over the place...
― winston, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 04:04 (fifteen years ago) link
http://www.8ballrecords.it/database/database_public/img/GERRY-RAFFERTY-CITY-TO-CITY.jpg also this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51B91V046XL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
which i think was actually recorded at a desultory beach party. liner notes:
So here we were --singing for a small crowd thatstood so far awaywe couldn't see their faces clearly,so -- not worrying about it -- playing pretty much for ourselves,having some fun in Florida --performing in a tiki hut (!) --mandarin orange slices with almonds,fresh fish,a big condo all to ourselves with awashing machine in the very building --The Rough Squirrels and I enjoyed this gig and on a return engagement decided to get a tape machine rolling --these are some of the highlights --purely for your pleasure --Here's your Pizza!
P.S. The real words to the first line ofthe first verse of "Samson and Delilah" are"I'm-uh ease your mind an' tell youwhere to find the best salon."The second verse is supposed to start with"Donna's gonna graduate an' Katy'sgot a date -- Alright!"
― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 04:33 (fifteen years ago) link
does bob welch fit here, or is that too slick? fleetwood mac connection tho
― velko, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 04:49 (fifteen years ago) link
also, some nilsson. possibly all nilsson. definitely this nilsson:
― tipsy mothra, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 04:54 (fifteen years ago) link
xpost. welch totally fits. check this track? slick, and wonderful http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Let-Me-Fall/dp/B0017QQAE6
and this one is totally driving, bearded rock
― jaxon, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 04:56 (fifteen years ago) link
"tim is from stupid australia"
Yeah we have no clue. Even our one big country singer is called Keith URBAN.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 06:27 (fifteen years ago) link
sorry i seem to have dragged this thread into "max has fantasies about sweden and los angeles"
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 10:34 (fifteen years ago) link
stuff from the 70s thread that does NOT fit this: the beau brummels & the byrds
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 10:35 (fifteen years ago) link
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 10:37 (fifteen years ago) link
maybe some rick roberts solo stuff? burrito bros probably not. maybe firefall
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 10:43 (fifteen years ago) link
siah and max's points about the imaginariness of americana are interesting. I guess you could say that americana is like a fascimile of realness where balearica is like a photocopy of a photocopy on an order of infinite regress. Which I imagine is what siah is getting at when he commends the "honesty" of "yacht rock". It's the honesty of faking so real u are beyond fake.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 11:36 (fifteen years ago) link
what beardo's listen when it's raining and they can't get to the beach:
http://www.whiskeyexperience.co.nz/music/images/m/Martyn,%20John%20-%20Bless%20The%20Weather.jpg
― caek, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 15:46 (fifteen years ago) link
apostrophe catastrophe
― caek, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 15:47 (fifteen years ago) link
Haven't read this thread all the way through, but would "In The Skies" by Peter Green qualify?
― Discordian, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 15:55 (fifteen years ago) link
i don't want to come off all mike taylor about this, but let's try to keep one foot firmly rooted in reality. i've lived most of my life within sight of the ocean. in fact right now i live close enough that i can hear the waves on the beach. the "geographical literalist" argument makes no sense to me. practically nobody here listens to this kind of music. surfers listen to jam bands (like dave matthews, jack johnson or tortoise), indie rock (modest mouse, ratatat), rap music (conscious or not), new punk and AOR reggae (marley family offshoots). if they listen to 70s music its likely to be stones, sabbath or bowie rather than freak-folky obscurity.
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:09 (fifteen years ago) link
jokes bruv
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:11 (fifteen years ago) link
lol tho vahid one of my posts above had "i should stop before vahid jumps on me for just making shit up" but i edited it out
i'm not trying to deny that it's interesting to try to sketch out an "imaginary genre" here but i just don't want anybody thinking that this is some sort of california cultural phenomenon or anything like that.
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:13 (fifteen years ago) link
back to suggestions
bobby brown's 'The Enlightening Beam Of Axonda'
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61GH2KN4C9L._SL500_AA240_.jpg
― jaxon, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:17 (fifteen years ago) link
OMG YES
i just bought the reissue on sundazed last week and i was thinking of adding it to this thread before i decided to rant
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
xxp i think ive made it clear that im not trying to account for anything outside of my head here; that the blog-ass ramblings above are mostly half-hearted attempts to articulate my own, uh, i dont know, like, 'spiritual' or 'psychic' relationship to this music and what it represents in terms of places that ive lived and visited.
that being said i do think that a sense of place, or lack thereof, is at stake in a big way w/r/t much of the music being discussed here--both on the strictly formal level insofar as a lot of it involves the wrangling of quite culturally/geographically specific musics and on the more, like, cultural level where its produced and received as a piece of the tropics, from or for or out of the beach.
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
xp actually it was on akarma, not sundazed.
though that's not really "beach party" in the sense of dancing around a bonfire ... it's more like the sound of hippies lying in the sand with their heads touching and their feet forming a star, watching for comets while frying.
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:22 (fifteen years ago) link
i dunno max, on one level what you're saying about geography makes perfect sense and i am sympathetic to it, on the other it sounds a bit like arguing that "music for airports" is actually about airports, or best understood in terms of thinking about airports. which it might be, come to think of it ...
― moonship journey to baja, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:23 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah i think the geographic thing makes perfect sense and if you are a cerebral music nerd living next to the ocean it makes sense that it informs your listening habits. that's speaking 100% from experience (i live a block away from the pacific next to some beaches that are naturally very intense and wild).
― tricky, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:57 (fifteen years ago) link
perhaps we can continue both the thought experiment and suggestions?
only because i am curious as to how both max and siah view this music or freedom of location/this sense of placelessness somehow correlates with a particular fantasy of wealth or upper class lifestyle. maybe this is the most truly American attribute to the contextualization of this music because unless i remember incorrectly, the balearic sound derives from the music played on the paradise-like balearic isles in the 1970s when they were inhabited by loads of hippies who did nothing but walk around nude all day and go to dance parties at night listening to this music. in this sense i think the music relates to the island paradise driven concept of escapism which now permeates many americans' fantasies of escaping (or maybe just me, siah, and max). that this music is somehow now contextualized as upper class though is interesting because at first i had trouble fitting the whole "hippie" label into this pseudo-genre which i, given my urban perspective on the music, took to be much more cosmopolitan. now i'm rambling as well...
for a suggestion, the new Woolfy vs. Projections album The Astral Projections Of Starlight is quite beautiful with beachy guitars and dreamy vocals but then again it fits into my more cosmopolitan version of a balearic beardo hippie beach canon
― Bomb Bomb Iran (san frandisco), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 19:00 (fifteen years ago) link
One track has been posted to 20JFG here
http://www.20jazzfunkgreats.co.uk/wordpress/2008/10/15/a-post-so-smooth-it-could-be-made-of-baby-skin/#comments
― Bomb Bomb Iran (san frandisco), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 19:06 (fifteen years ago) link
balearic is kind of like rockism in that I have only seen those two godforsaken words on this webpage
― cool app (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 19:14 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm kinda interested in the Scandinavian/Kraut/European side of this spectrum, esp. considering the fact that E2-E4 loosely fits this vibe (Gottsching was sooooo a hippie). There has to be more in this vein...
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/87/258081144_081a7a6cf3.jpg?v=0
Plus, the whole Laurel Canyon-beach vibe you're going for just doesn't make sense to me. Guess I just don't see how the 'beachy' side fits in, especially in "If I Could Only Remember My Name," which has always been about the mountains for me (who cares what the cover looks like). I mean, maybe you're just looking for country-rock made by drug casualties of the '70s, but that starts to veer towards boogie-rock territory or loner-psych, which is way more 'beardo' than 'balearic'.
That being said, what do you think of Jim Ford in this context? Is he on the Americana side of the axis, even though he was notorious for coke-fueled yacht parties and could bust out some seriously funky grooves alongside the honky-tonk?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Yxx2vqHKL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
― psychgawsple, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 19:34 (fifteen years ago) link
yacht rockism?
― Bomb Bomb Iran (san frandisco), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 19:42 (fifteen years ago) link
http://images.juno.co.uk/full/CS1360340-02A-BIG.jpg
― Bomb Bomb Iran (san frandisco), Tuesday, 21 October 2008 19:49 (fifteen years ago) link
Jim Ford is certainly hard to pin down...I always saw him as more C & W than R & B...he was a notoriously violent drunk, which I always thought explained his predilection toward honky-tonk...he also always claimed to be the true author of "Ode To Billy Joe"...
― henry s, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:00 (fifteen years ago) link
re jim ford: hmmm, don't know if he fits, the funkier tunes maybe get close??some great tunes on that either wayxpost
― velko, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:02 (fifteen years ago) link
Some more suggestions, possibly slightly too Dad Rock, maybe not beachy enough.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515BhRBIt%2BL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://www.musicdirect.com/shared/images/products/large/crhi78274-2.jpg
And no I'm really not kidding about that Doobie album, its basically Gaucho with Michael McDonald singing.
― Siah Alan, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:45 (fifteen years ago) link
i love that little feat album
― max, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:52 (fifteen years ago) link
And this is for Tim as He's looking for stuff in the Santana line of thinking.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41VAFDS0RVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
http://www.zshare.net/audio/501517708612833b/
Gypsy - Gypsy Queen Pt. 1
― Siah Alan, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:54 (fifteen years ago) link
Max you're totally right about Shawn Phillips BTW. So much of his stuff would fit on this thread.
Let me dig around a bit.
― Siah Alan, Tuesday, 21 October 2008 20:57 (fifteen years ago) link